Workers in Tuscaloosa vote against bid to unionize, as UAW president Shawn Fain hails impact of campaign despite defeat
The United Auto Workers has failed in its effort to unionize workers at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in a blow to the union’s plans to build its membership in the southern states.
The loss on Friday comes amid the UAW’s ambitious union-organizing campaign to organize 150,000 non-union auto workers around the US.
Continue reading...Samantha Power says barely 100 trucks of aid a day enter Gaza, far less than 600 needed to address threat of famine
Humanitarian assistance has begun to arrive in Gaza along a US-made pier, but the US aid chief said the new sea corridor could not be a substitute for land crossings, and warned that deliveries of food and fuel entering Gaza had slowed to “dangerously low levels”.
The White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, confirmed on Friday that truckloads of humanitarian aid, including food from the United Arab Emirates, sent by ship from Cyprus, had been unloaded on the Gaza coast and handed over to the control of the UN.
Continue reading...DePape, a rightwing conspiracy theorist, broke into the Pelosis’ San Francisco home in 2022 and hit Paul Pelosi with a hammer
David DePape, a rightwing conspiracy theorist who broke into Nancy Pelosi’s northern California home in 2022 and bludgeoned her husband with a hammer, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.
A federal jury convicted him of attempted kidnapping of a federal official and assault on the immediate family member of a federal official in November 2023, just over a year after the attack in the former House speaker’s San Francisco home.
Continue reading...In texts received in Spanish and translated to English, the girl tried to describe her location, though she did not know where she was
Authorities rescued a 17-year old girl after she was trafficked to Ventura county, California, from Mexico two months ago and texted 911 for help.
On Thursday, the Ventura county sheriff’s office announced that on 9 May authorities rescued the girl after she sent messages to 911. The text message correspondence began with a call taker at a 911 communication center, according to the sheriff’s office, which added that the messages were received in Spanish and translated into English.
Continue reading...Squabble started when Marjorie Taylor Greene insulted House member, spurring Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to demand apology
The two most famous sets of initials in US politics clashed in a chaotic House hearing on Thursday, as the progressive star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or AOC, objected fiercely to an attack on another Democrat by the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, or MTG.
The oversight committee hearing concerned Republican attempts to hold the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, in contempt, for refusing to release tapes of interviews between Joe Biden and the special counsel Robert Hur.
Continue reading...Trump will look to again cast Biden as greatly diminished while Biden will aim to remind voters why they rejected Trump in 2020
It’s game on for a pair of presidential debates between two unpopular candidates most Americans wish weren’t running for the nation’s highest office.
In a ratatat social media exchange on Wednesday, Joe Biden and Donald Trump agreed to participate in two debates on 27 June, hosted by CNN, and on 10 September, hosted by ABC.
Continue reading...Incident casts doubt on supreme court justice’s impartiality in upcoming cases as inverted flag is associated with Trump’s stolen election claims
An upside-down American flag was reportedly spotted flying outside the home of the conservative US supreme court justice Samuel Alito during the closing days of the 2020 election.
The inverted flag is a symbol that has become associated with the former president Donald Trump’s false claims that Joe Biden stole the election.
Continue reading...Adaptation of hit comedy quiz will begin airing on CNN on Saturday nights to coincide with presidential election
Arch, ironic and understated, Have I Got News for You is the quintessential British comedy quiz, but its creators are hoping a US version of the show can translate its particular brand of political humour across the Atlantic.
A US adaptation of the show will be broadcast by CNN in the autumn, to coincide with the presidential election. It will hit screens on Saturday nights – part of a double-bill with Bill Maher’s Real Time.
Continue reading...Fast-moving thunderstorms strike in Texas for second time this month, knocking out power to more than 900,000 homes
Fast-moving thunderstorms pummeled south-eastern Texas for the second time this month, killing at least four people, blowing out windows in high-rise buildings, downing trees and knocking out power to more than 900,000 homes and businesses in the Houston area.
Officials urged residents to keep off roads following Thursday’s storms, as many were impassable and traffic lights were out. The storm system moved through swiftly, but flood watches and warnings remained on Friday for Houston and areas to the east.
Continue reading...Phone messages and meetings suggest a friendship between Copperfield and the disgraced financier. His lawyers deny it
The message pads appear a little faded, but the handwriting on the spiral-bound notebooks is clear enough.
Staff at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion in Florida’s Palm Beach used the pads to jot down the names of the people who had called the financier, and between 2004 and 2005, one well-known person appeared to be calling persistently.
Continue reading...Greg Abbott on Thursday pardoned Daniel Perry, who has been serving a 25-year sentence since 2023 murder conviction
Governor Greg Abbott of Texas issued a full pardon on Thursday to a former US army sergeant convicted of murder for fatally shooting an armed demonstrator in 2020 during nationwide protests against police violence and racial injustice.
Abbott announced the pardon just minutes after the Texas board of pardons and paroles disclosed it had made a unanimous recommendation that Daniel Perry be pardoned and have his firearms rights restored. Perry has been held in state prison on a 25-year sentence since his conviction in 2023.
Continue reading...Vote to confer was a 50-38 decision as students and alumni protest at Biden being commencement speaker over handling of Gaza war
Morehouse College faculty voted on Thursday to confer an honorary doctorate on Joe Biden during its upcoming graduation ceremony on Sunday, for which he plans to deliver the commencement address.
The vote to confer the honorary doctorate was a 50-38 decision, with about a dozen faculty members abstaining ahead of the planned visit, which has prompted protests from some students, faculty and alumni over the president’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas.
Continue reading...House Republicans seek recordings of classified documents case interviews, in what Democrats call a ‘purely political’ move
Joe Biden asserted executive privilege to stop House Republicans obtaining recordings of his interviews with Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s retention of classified information after his time as a senator and as vice-president to Barack Obama.
In a letter reported by the New York Times and other outlets on Thursday, the White House counsel, Edward Siskel, told the Republican chairs of the House judiciary and oversight committees: “The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal – to chop them up, distort them and use them for partisan political purposes.
Continue reading...American Museum of Natural History says Dr Lorenzo Prendini was working on research project and ‘has arrived safely home’
A curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York who was detained in Istanbul on Monday while allegedly attempting to smuggle spider and scorpion samples out of Turkey has been released.
In statement on Thursday, a spokesperson for the museum said Dr Lorenzo Prendini, curator of arachnida and myriapoda, had arrived back in New York.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed. You can read our latest reporting below:
Judge Juan Merchan is on the bench and the court is in session.
Donald Trump has arrived in the courtroom for day 18 of his criminal trial.
Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican representative
Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican congresswoman
Eric Trump
Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump aide
Continue reading...Mike Lee told students that Sonoma State would become first US university to refuse to work with Israeli academic institutions
A public university in California has placed its president on leave for “insubordination” after he agreed to student demands for an academic boycott of Israel.
Mike Lee was suspended from Sonoma State University following an announcement on Tuesday that the liberal arts college north of San Francisco had agreed with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) to become the first US university to refuse to work with Israeli academic institutions.
Continue reading...Aid agencies poised to receive supplies and distribute to territory where people face imminent starvation
The US military has said the installation of a floating pier for the delivery of humanitarian aid off Gaza has been completed, with officials ready to begin ferrying supplies into the territory, where much of the population faces imminent starvation owing to the continuing Israel-Hamas war.
Ordered two months ago by the president, Joe Biden, the US military transported the system overnight from the Israeli port of Ashdod, about 20 miles north of Gaza.
Continue reading...Late British painter’s Les Distractions de Dagobert, ‘the apotheosis of Carrington’s oeuvre’, was inspired by Hieronymus Bosch
The auction record for British surrealist Leonora Carrington was smashed at Sotheby’s in New York on Wednesday night, marking a new high point for the artist, who lived in Mexico for most of her life and was until her death in 2011 one of the last surviving participants of the surrealist movement of the 1930s.
Carrington’s 1945 painting Les Distractions de Dagobert was auctioned for $28m with fees, soaring over a presale estimate of $12m-$18m after 10 minutes of bidding. The sum fetched is nine times Carrington’s previous auction record of $3.2m.
Continue reading...Barrett Blade says wife, who testified in hush-money trial, ‘wants to move past this’ but admits ‘I don’t see people fighting for her’
The husband of Stormy Daniels said there is a “good chance” that the couple will leave the US if Donald Trump is acquitted in his criminal trial over paying hush-money payments to the adult film star.
“I think if it’s not guilty, we got to decide what to do. Good chance we’ll probably vacate this country,” Barrett Blade told CNN host Erin Burnett on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Republican senator tells MSNBC that ‘frankly, the country doesn’t want to have to go through prosecuting a former president’
Joe Biden should have pardoned Donald Trump on all federal criminal charges the moment they were announced, the Utah senator and former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said.
“Had I been President Biden,” Romney said, “when the justice department brought out indictments, I would have immediately pardoned him. I’d have pardoned President Trump.”
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